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It used to be the case that gaming was a mitt mangling pursuit. Boot up any beat-'em-up or platformer from the twilight days of the 16-bit era and you would get a workout for finger joints you didn’t even know you had.

But more than that, it’ll have your noggin in a twist after the first few levels, offering a challenge that achieves the rare feat of taxing your wits and nimble fingers simultaneously.

Tangram by any other name

Borrowing somewhat audaciously from the ancient Chinese puzzle game Tangram, Cross Fingers has you manoeuvering angular shapes into place on a board.

The twist here is that the board itself is a trap. You need to think carefully about the order in which you move shapes, lest you close the gap through which you need to slide a shape into place.

As you progress, red blocks are introduced as a new obstacle. Red blocks can be moved, but you need to keep your finger held down on them, otherwise they spring back into their original resting position, once again blocking the way.

This necessitates the use of three and often four fingers simultaneously, as you hold red blocks out of the way while shifting the puzzle pieces around.

It’s a brilliant a gaming use of Apple’s multi-touch display and will have you knitting your fingers into a spaghetti junction while your mind reels with the task of sensibly ruling out which moves to make in which order.

Thumbing its nose in the face of adversity

The presentation is functional, but it does contain some of those pleasant minimalist motifs present in Mobigame’s first game, 'the troubled Edge',as it has most recently been known.

That game was a beautifully designed mix of puzzling and dexterity, and Cross Fingers proves that it was no fluke. If this cracking little title is anything to go by, it will take more than a handful of lawsuits to thwart Mobigame’s creative spark.